


Recourse

by Ember_Keelty



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mages and Templars, No Anders without Justice, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 03:03:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11865312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ember_Keelty/pseuds/Ember_Keelty
Summary: After defeating the Arishok in single combat and being declared Champion of Kirkwall, Hawke was supposed to be untouchable. But there have always been Templars in the Gallows willing to take action without official approval. Not long after the duel, some of them execute a plan to permanently end all this nonsense about treating an illegal mage as a hero, and Hawke and her apostate friends have a very unpleasant night.





	Recourse

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for [this prompt](http://dapromptexchange.tumblr.com/post/160815770759/meredith-cant-touch-the-champion-even-though) on tumblr's Dragon Age Prompt Exchange

Hawke wakes up to Bruiser launching himself off the bed and barking loud enough to split her ears. Before she's processed anything else, she has her knife out from beneath her pillow and her feet on the cold hardwood floor. It's the dead of night and her eyes aren't adjusting quickly enough for her liking, so she lights a fire in her palm to see what kind of burglar was stupid enough to try their luck with her.

A heavy chill falls over her, sinking beneath her skin to cloud her head and choke out the flame. She stumbles, more from dizziness than from the dark, and somewhere Bruiser yelps in pain just as a smite follows the silence. Her knees hit the floor, followed by her palms as she doubles over, hollow and disoriented and trying not to scream — because if she can't see, she needs to at least be able to hear — at the burn of holy fire consuming her from the inside.

Definitely not a burglar, then. And _just_ when she'd actually started to believe that things weren't going to end like this.

Bruiser shambles back to her and drapes his body protectively over her own. Hawke can smell him better than she can see him. She hears the low whine rolling around in his throat and feels hot blood dripping down thick enough to soak through her house robe. "What are you doing? Get out of here!" she mutters into what she thinks is probably his ear. "Go get help!"

He whimpers in protest, but then something flashes silver and he yelps again. The next thing Hawke knows, he's slinking away, his form melting into distant shadow as a human shape crouches down in front of her.

"So much for the fabled loyalty of the mabari," says a woman's voice, surprisingly undistorted by metal.

Hawke's eyes finally adjust to the darkness, enough so to make out the partial visor of a Templar hunter. She could get her in the neck, probably, just under the exposed chin. But her knife isn't in her hand. Hawke stares the Templar in the face as she feels around on the floor for her dropped weapon, hoping to hold her gaze and keep her from noticing what she's up to. "They are loyal. But they're also smart."

"Smart enough to stay out of our way, I take it. Well, that's better than I can say for some of their masters." She looks down. Hawke follows her gaze and sees the knife just a little too late. The Templar snatches it up before she can reach it.

Then she stabs it down through the back of Hawke's outstretched right hand and into the wood of the floor, pinning her there.

Hawke gives up on not screaming, because it's more important not to flinch. She holds very still while she tries to think through the agony and come up with a way to get free without mutilating herself.

Her assailant grabs her left wrist and holds it down, and Hawke is too afraid of losing her hand to struggle as the Templar draws a dagger of her own and carefully positions the point over the space between the bones of Hawke's forearm. The blade goes in slowly, skin and muscle resisting but inevitably giving way. Blood wells up as though from a spring and trickles down the sides of her arm, clinging and wet and only blocked from gushing out in torrents by the very thing that draws it. By the time the metal passes through her flesh and buries itself in the floorboards, Hawke doesn't know whether her head is spinning from the pain or just from how long her breath has been caught in her throat.

The Templar stands up. Hawke follows her with her eyes, unwilling to lift her head when even the slightest shifting of her muscles sends her body screaming signals into her brain that it is damaged and taking more damage with every movement. "Get the fire going!" the hunter calls out, and then there are more shadows drifting through the room. More Templars.

Long minutes pass until, from over by the unlit hearth, a new voice calls back, "I can't find the tinderbox!"

"Where do you keep it?" the hunter asks Hawke. When Hawke doesn't answer immediately, she stamps the metal heel of her boot down on her fingers. "Come on! Tinderbox! Are you deaf?"

"There isn't one," Hawke tells her. "Are you stupid?"

Apparently she is, because it takes her a second even then. "What do you..? Oh. Cute. I suppose you need some way to make use of those unholy powers of yours when you aren't butchering knight-lieutenants."

"Or Qunari," Hawke reminds her. "Or bandits. Or murderous blood mages who've got the run of the town because _some people_ are too busy torturing and raping defenseless prisoners to deal with them."

The hunter scoffs. "I can't tell if you're really that naive, or just willfully misunderstanding the purpose of the work we do. But it doesn't matter. You don't have to understand our purpose in order to serve it."

"And how exactly am I going to do that?" It's a natural opening for the question, and Hawke's glad for it. She refuses to show weakness, to scream, _What are you going to do to me?_ like her mind is already screaming. They're making no move to kill her or to drag her away to the Gallows, so what is this about?

Why did they want to get the fire lit? What do they mean by _serve_? The Rite of Tranquility isn't something that can be carried out just anywhere, is it?

"By proving a point for me, Champion." Hawke can just about hear the hunter sneering at her title. "By calling out to your demons for rescue and showing all of Kirkwall what you really are. The pain won't stop until you do."

"So... your point is that Templars drive mages to insanity who would otherwise be fine?" Between her relief and the absurdity of her captors' plan, Hawke almost laughs. "I've been saying that for years."

"No, my point is that no mage is incorruptible. If it doesn't happen now, it will likely happen later, where the damage will be uncontained and the lesson obscured."

"And you think this is going to work out well for you?" Hawke asks. She's bleeding and powerless and pinned like a bug, but all she has to do is hold onto her mind until she sees an opening to escape or her friends come to save her. She's survived far more hopeless struggles. "You're even stupider than I'd guessed. I can't believe that for a second there, I was almost scared of you. I thought you were going to kill me or worse."

"It will be worse," the hunter assures her. "And then I'm going to kill you."

"Try me."

The Templar lifts a hand, and what little mana Hawke has managed to recover since the first smite burns up in the inferno that ignites beneath her skin.

—

Merrill follows the path of the twine with her eyes as well as with her feet as she retraces her steps and reels it in, keeping her gaze fixed on the muddy ground of Darktown. She knows she won't trip, this way, though it does somewhat increase the risk of bumping her head on something. It also keeps her from staring at people she passes by — if, for example, they're wearing something interesting, or they've done their hair in a way she isn't familiar with — which is rude as well as distracting, and some of the shemlen down here don't react very gracefully to rudeness. Some of the shemlen down here are also the sort of people she might want to see before they see her, but it isn't as though she can be on the lookout in all directions at once.

Varric would probably be cross with her for being in this part of the city at this time of evening. But she passed through here earlier, so this is where the twine leads, and he would also be cross with her for going off the path and getting lost.

As she loops another coil around her ball, the twine goes taut in her hands. That means it's caught on something nearby. Merrill lifts her head to look into the middle distance and sees a lump of fawn-colored fur lying on the line. She approaches slowly and cautiously but not without a twinge of eagerness. There are so few animals in the city, and she dearly misses seeing them.

The lump is a mabari hound, and he's badly injured. There's a broad puncture wound in his neck and a deep slash across his flank. A trail of blood stretches out parallel to the twine, suggesting he was following it from the opposite direction. "Were you looking for me?" Merrill asks him. "Or... smelling... for me? Wait— Bruiser? Is that you?"

The dog answers with a weak but affirmative-sounding bark.

Merrill feels her heartbeat stutter, then race ahead as though to make up time. "Bruiser! What happened to you? Where's Hawke?" Bruiser whimpers, obviously distressed, and Merrill could just about kick herself. "Wait, sorry, you don't have to answer that! I have to get you patched up first. Then you can show me." Bruiser barks again, the same way as before, and wriggles about in the muck, smearing it with blood. "No, no, don't do that, please! Just... stay calm. I have to think."

Merrill looks about the alley and tries to get her bearings. She _thinks_ she knows where she is, and Anders' clinic should only be about a twenty-minute walk away. But walking is one thing, and moving an injured animal who weighs more than she does is another. She could run there and back, but she hates the idea of leaving Bruiser alone.

This would be so much easier if she had any healing ability of her own. A lot of things would be, but that wasn't the path she chose.

Merrill strokes Bruiser's head absently, for her own comfort as well as for his, and holds back what's left of his blood from spilling out of him as she comes up with a plan.

—

The dagger sticking Hawke's left wrist to the ground is coated in magebane. She didn't notice at first, because having a fucking piece of metal shoved through her body was enough to account for the initial pain, but now the poison has spread up her arm and into her core, burning in her veins and keeping her weak no matter how hard she tries to pull more mana from the Fade.

Maybe lying down on her stomach helped it spread faster, without gravity to work against. Maybe that was a bad idea. But struggling to keep her balance on her hands and knees had been making her arms shake, and her arms shaking had torn up the edges of the wounds around the knives that are still fucking embedded in her.

She really wants those out, now. Her blood should be inside of her, and knives should not.

The Templar hunter sits perched on the edge of Hawke's bed. A few minutes ago, she was on her feet and circling, crushing fingers beneath her heels and kicking in ribs whenever Hawke managed to steady her breath. Now, apparently, it's break time.

"Getting bored?" Hawke asks her.

"Not at all." Her mouth splits into a grin, white teeth flashing in the dark. "I just don't want you losing consciousness."

"You've done this before."

"Perhaps."

Of course she has. Anders mentioned once that Ser Alrik used to play games like this. Of course he wasn't the only one. "You enjoy hurting people?"

"No. Only mages."

"That must be convenient. I was a mercenary, once. The violence was fun, but I can't say I liked being told what to do or who to do it to. Sounds like you don't have that problem."

The hunter laughs curtly. "If this is some sort of screed about how we aren't all that different, you and I, then I recommend you save your breath."

"It isn't." It's just the opposite, really, but Hawke isn't sure that she can blame this one on Templars being stupid, because she doubts she's making very much sense right now. It's not just the wounds in her hand and wrist being jostled around anymore. Her ribs are bruised and possibly broken. It hurts to speak, so she rushes through her words to get the speaking over with quickly. It hurts to breathe too deeply, and keeping her breathing shallow can't be doing wonders for her lucidity. But the trash talk distracts her from thinking too hard about what's happening to her body, which is worth it even if she isn't coming off sounding particularly clever. With that line of distraction exhausted, Hawke casts around for a new one, and suddenly something worrying occurs to her. "Are dwarves people?"

"What are you on about now?"

"What did you do to the servants?" How did it take her this long to remember Bodahn and Sandal? All this time, she was only thinking of herself.

"Oh, them? They're incapacitated, but unharmed. For now." There's a careful casualness to the Templar's voice. This is bait with a hook in it. "Why do you ask?" she continues, and Hawke hears, _How much do you care?_

Fortunately, Hawke doesn't care _that_ much, really. At least, not so much that it's difficult to cover for. "Just wondering. And coming up short on topics for conversation."

"Like I said, then: save your breath."

"You worried I'll run out?" Hawke shoots back, then realizes that's actually a good question. "How long do you think you can keep me here without killing me?"

"Long enough. You're not going to die quietly, I know that." She shifts on the bed, turning her back, and there's a sound of fabric ripping. Hawke resolves not to worry about what she's up to. It will probably be clear soon enough.

"You do realize I could ruin the whole game by killing myself? I don't need demons for that. I could just tear open my own hand and bleed."

"You won't, though," the hunter says with confidence. "I know who you are, Serah Hawke. I've heard all about what you do to people who cross you. I know there's no chance you'll let this go without at least trying to get your licks in." She pauses, and in the quiet moments that follow, Hawke can just barely make out a soft rustling sound that she doesn't know the meaning of. "Or maybe that's what you think you're doing now?" Another pause, then she calls across the room, "Morley, get over here and help me! Hold her head up!"

There's a clank of armor as another Templar approaches, and then both of them are hovering over Hawke, and there's a hand in her hair, dragging her up, bending her neck against the dead weight of her broken, useless body until she thinks it just might snap. A metal fist connects with her back, right above her lungs, and when she gasps in pain and need for air, something wedges between her teeth, wrenching her jaw and choking her.

The hunter pulls the makeshift gag tight and ties it off behind her head, then the other Templar drops her and lets her face smash against the floor. Hawke's nose begins to bleed at the impact, all but completely smothering her breath.

"If you want to be chatty," the hunter tells her, "then chat with the demons."

—

Anders should probably be asleep. He's taken in the lantern, but that hasn't stopped him from keeping himself up cleaning and organizing stock and prepping fresh potions and poultices. There's so much he's behind on after the days he spent at Hawke's bedside, tending to her wounds from fighting the bloody Arishok in single combat. Anders still can't believe he's given his heart to someone who does things like that. He's just asking to get it shattered again, and he fears that this time he won't be able to put the pieces back together.

Maker's breath, he's already avoiding his cold, hard cot because he knows he won't be able to get any sleep without her lying beside him. He has gone and spoiled himself, and maybe the only thing for it is to finally follow up on that promise to move in with her, the one he made months ago in a moment of reckless passion. He doesn't doubt that Hawke really would declare to the whole world and the knight-commander herself that he's under her protection. That's what worries him. But now the world and the knight-commander know that Hawke's an apostate too, and nothing terrible has come of that just yet, so Anders may finally be out of excuses.

When a knock comes on the door, soft and short and polite, Anders ignores it at first. After a pause, there's another, more insistent knock, and then another pause, and then banging. Anders gets his staff ready. The Underground has a code, and his patients know to look for the lantern — which doesn't _always_ mean that they leave him be when he brings it in, if they're desperate, but he's prepared for the worst. In his experience, the worst usually happens sooner or later, and if anything, he's past due.

"Anders? Anders, I know you're in there! Come out, please!" Even muffled by the wood of the door, Merrill's deceptively sweet voice and Dalish accent are unmistakable. Anders lets out the breath he was holding in a sigh of mixed relief and exasperation, and goes to answer.

"What do you want?" he grumbles as the door swings open. He holds up the lantern to examine her, and Merrill's eyes reflect the light back at him, round and bright as the moons. She doesn't look injured, but... "Maker's balls, what is that behind you?" It's some kind of large animal, and it's huddled on a makeshift sledge: a sheet of scrap metal torn from the wall of some Darktown shanty and pulled along by vine-like tendrils of nature magic. "Please, _please_ don't tell me you went and caught me a mountain lion. I was only joking about that."

"What?" Merrill blinks at him. "No, of course not, don't be silly! It's just Bruiser, he doesn't look anything like a— Right, humans and nighttime, sorry! It's Bruiser, and he's hurt. I was just over... that way, I think, and I found him in the street... or he found me, anyhow. Or, wait, maybe it was more over that way?"

Anders feels his heart rise into his throat the moment Merrill mentions Hawke's dog, and while she's still babbling, he pushes past her and drops onto his knees in the dirt. Bruiser is caked with blood and muck, his breathing ragged. Worse, though, is the telltale scent of magebane and lyrium clinging to his fur.

"Where's Hawke?" Anders asks. His voice is weak, catching and cracking in his throat. They can't take her. Not now, not when she's finally supposed to be safe. They were the ones who named her Champion, so what are they playing at?

"I don't know," Merrill says, her tone suddenly solemn. "But Bruiser can take us to her. That's why I brought him here."

"Where is she?! What have they done to her, and why have they done it now?" He rises to his feet, towering above Merrill at his full height, and his hands fall upon her shoulders. "Do you truly know so little?"

Merrill has to crane her neck to look up at him, but he sees no fear in her eyes as she does so. "Anders." There is a strange power in his name when she says it, an authority that tugs at his mind. It isn't blood magic, because he knows too well what blood magic feels like, and it's nothing near this gentle — but she _is_ a blood mage, a cohort to demons, so how can he trust her? "Bruiser needs healing. He needs _you_. You're the healer, Anders."

What is he doing? She's completely right. He is Anders, he is the healer, and he isn't going to get anywhere if he doesn't focus. He has no real reason not to trust Merrill, not when it comes to Hawke. Nor does he have time to waste being sidetracked by paranoia.

Anders releases her without a word, then returns his attention to Bruiser and gets to work.

—

Hawke's consciousness flickers like candlelight. One moment she's lying facedown in her own blood, then the next moment she's somewhere else, somewhere full of whispers and grasping claws and starving things that want to crawl inside of her and taste the world with her tongue. _Go away,_ she tells them, but even as she says it, she's back in her body and mumbling uselessly into the gag.

"You know," comes the Templar hunter's voice, casual and conversational, "there's a reason I was hoping to use fire for this. Your apostate friends, the little rabbit girl and that creature you found living in the sewers? I wanted to give you a taste of the pain they'll feel when we burn out their minds."

She's definitely going to die, Hawke reminds herself. Her and Morley and whatever other Templars are lurking about in the shadows. No matter what happens, there's no chance this filth is getting away with their lives.

"The _sewers_ , though," the hunter continues with a laugh. "I really can't get over that part. He's not even _that_ good-looking. But I suppose you must have your reasons." There's a touch of cold metal on the back of Hawke's neck, just at the base of her skull, as the Templar hooks a finger under the knot holding the gag in place. "Hey. If I take this off, will you let me know what he does for you that makes you want to keep him around? The Tranquil don't have much initiative, you see. They only do what you tell them."

Hawke could kill her right now. She's close, well within arm's reach. Hands are solid, trapped by their solidity, but that could change. She could have claws of her own. She could tear this vile woman's face off.

 _I told you to go away,_ she thinks at the whispers. _I'm not stupid, and I'm not going to let her win._

This is a whole new level of idiocy for the Templars, that they actually believe they can get what they want from her by making her angry. Hawke has always been angry. She's been fending off rage demons for as long as she's been able to dream.

They don't stop trying, though. All those years, all those failures, and still they haven't stopped trying. They probably never will, no matter how many times she wins. Earlier this very night she was sleeping peacefully, dreamlessly, in her own bed in her own house, and now there are knives in her body and demons pressing against her mind. There's no happy ending where she beats them all forever and gets to move on with her life. This _is_ her life, and she doesn't want it to end.

Really. She doesn't. So why won't they just go away?

—

Bruiser leads them to the cellar entrance of Hawke's mansion, and Anders nearly explodes in frustration. This is the first place he would have gone to, had he attempted to locate Hawke on his own! He has wasted precious time!

Pressing a hand to his chest and taking a deep, measured breath, he reminds himself that Hawke would never forgive him for abandoning her dog — so the time wasn't _really_ wasted, was it?

"I'll go ahead," Merrill offers as Anders unlocks the door. "Clear the way. If it's Templars... Well. You have to get to Hawke with your magic intact. She'll probably need you." Bruiser barks, and Merrill turns her attention to him. "Oh, yes, of course you can come too! They'll be expecting you."

"Fine," Anders seethes in response. He knows her plan is a good one, but he is in no mood to acknowledge that gracefully. He cannot bear waiting a second longer than necessary to learn whether Hawke is even still alive and to destroy everyone who has forced him to wonder. "You... you do that."

He gets the door open, and Merrill and the dog go in. Anders attempts for about five seconds to wait by the entrance to give them a head start before deciding that's impossible and trailing after them.

The cellar is dark enough that Anders needs a wisp to make his way through it without bumping into anything, but Merrill moves confidently ahead of him. She climbs the stairs to the foyer and opens the door just wide enough to peek in. A thin bar of torchlight stretches in through the crack — which, on the one hand, means that Anders will be able to see in that room, but also means that there may already be someone in there who needs the light.

A shout of "Who goes there?" confirms that suspicion. Merrill throws the door wide and charges through, Bruiser barking at her heels. Anders vaults up the stairs, but forces himself to pause at the threshold to get his bearings.

There's three Templars in the foyer — the foyer of _Hawke's home_ , where she lives, where she sleeps, where those lying bastards told her they would let her remain in recognition of her service to the city — but Anders can't waste his energy on these ones because he has to get to Hawke. Merrill draws their attention and engages them at the far end of the room, ensnaring them with her magic vines and opening her own veins for power when they try to drain her.

Bruiser, barking frantically, peels away from her and dashes up the stairway to Hawke's bedroom, the door of which slams open, and a fourth Templar emerges, sword raised. Bruiser leaps at him fangs-first and latches onto his gorget. The Templar throws himself off-balance trying to hack him off, and the two of them go tumbling down the stairs.

Anders slips past the fighting and makes for the bedroom, racing against his own rage and panic. He cannot afford to draw attention, and there are few things more attention-grabbing than the way that Justice tends to reveal himself.

The Templars fighting Merrill don't notice him at all. The one rolling around cursing at the foot of the stairs does, and reaches out to snag his ankle. Anders trips, cutting open his hands on the edge of a step when he throws them out to avoid cracking his head, but then Bruiser snarls, and the Templar yells and loosens his grip, and Anders pulls out of his grasp and runs without pausing to look back, without even pausing to heal.

He makes it up the stairs and into the bedroom, and what he sees there freezes him on his feet even before the Templar hunter calls out, "Hold! Not one move closer!"

It's Hawke. The Templar who shouted crouches over her, holding her head up by the hair and pressing a dagger to her throat. She's still breathing, but her eyes are unfocused, and she is limp and unresisting in the hunter's hands, and there is so, so much blood. Anders doesn't even notice the other Templar standing off to the side until it's too late and the silence falls over him.

"What are you doing here?" Anders demands — or tries to demand, but his voice sounds weak and frightened even to his own ears.

"Get on your knees," the hunter tells him. "Hands behind your back. I'll answer your questions when I'm satisfied that you aren't a threat."

Never. He will not capitulate, he will not kneel, he will not return to their clutches to be chained and made to bow beneath the blows of their fists and the sting of the lash. That was the promise he made to himself, the promise Justice made to him.

But that was before Hawke.

Anders drops to his knees and bites his lip to hold back the screams of fury brewing like a storm in his chest. This will accomplish nothing! He knows what Templars are like. If they mean to kill her, they will kill her. He cannot prevent that by surrendering.

The more heavily armored Templar approaches him cautiously, irons in hand, but Anders looks only at Hawke. _If she stops breathing, I'll kill them_ , he tries to compromise with himself, with an entity that deplores compromise. It does nothing to calm either the anger or the fear.

As he watches her, she stirs. Her eyes snap into focus. They turn cold and hard as steel as she lifts her head to meet his gaze, radiating disapproval as unmistakably as the fire in his own mind.

"I'm sorry," he tells her. "I can't let you—"

Before he can even say it, she jerks her right arm with such force that the knife pinning it in place cleaves though her hand and lets loose a fountain of blood.

The fire consumes him.

—

There is a pain that goes deeper than healing magic can reach. It is a pain that resides in memory and in the knowledge of one's own helplessness. The knowledge that others can hurt you however they choose, whenever they choose, and without fear of consequence.

That is why there must be consequence. There must be retribution. Call it justice, or call it vengeance. The line is thin and difficult to place, and more and more he suspects that it may simply be a matter of which victims are considered worth avenging.

Deep down, Anders does not consider himself worth much at all. It is a mark left on his mind by his own torturers, and it has set him at odds with Justice more often than any other conflict between them.

Hawke is different. Hawke is good. He loves Hawke with everything that he is, however the disparate parts of himself may diverge in expressing that love.

The silence is smothering, but he does not need to draw mana from the Fade and cast it into the mortal plane in order to achieve his ends. There is a part of the Fade that lives within his soul, and it flares up now, so expansive and bright that his physical form cracks under the strain of enduring it.

It is too much for any mortal who crosses him to endure. The Templar attempting to chain him reels backward in shock, but not quickly enough. Justice swings his arms forward and claps his fists on either side of his assailant's helmet, smashing the skull between them.

As the corpse falls to the floor, Justice rises to his feet and turns his attention to the Templar hunter, who has put space between herself and Hawke's motionless body. She expects blood magic, the birth of a maleficar or abomination. Her expectations will not be met. It is not a demon that Hawke's sacrifice was meant to summon.

She slashes at his arms when he reaches out to seize her by the wrists, but to no avail. "Maker defend me," she gasps as the thin bones of her forearms bend and crack like green twigs. "What _are_ you?"

"No questions," he snarls at her, "while you are still a threat."

Then he rends her limb from limb until she ceases to be one.

—

Hawke wakes to the sunrise filtering through the hallway windows and seeping in beneath her door, adding its illumination to that of the fire already crackling in the hearth. She's in her own bed, propped up on the pillows, the light cotton sheets smooth and cool against her skin. Beneath them, she's been stripped to her smallclothes. That makes sense; her house robe must be a bloody mess.

It makes less sense that her own body isn't one, but then she feels Anders' hand on hers and looks up to see him sitting on the edge of the mattress, watching her with tired eyes. Merrill has pulled up a chair on the other side and is sleeping slumped over with her arms folded on the bed and her head tucked against her arms. Bruiser is curled up on top of the sheets, a warmth nestled over Hawke's shins and feet.

Is this a trick of the Fade? Hawke closes her eyes and does not see through the lids. She opens them again, and no part of the scene has shifted unaccountably.

"You're safe for now, love," Anders assures her, because of course he recognizes the gesture. "I'm here. This is real."

Hawke moves her hand, the one she remembers shredding to force Anders to his senses, until she has him in her hold and their fingers are entwined. Everything still works, and she feels no pain. She lifts his hand to her lips and kisses every knuckle, the constellation of freckles stretching between his thumb and forefinger, the shackle scars hidden beneath his long sleeves. She knows and loves Anders' hands, loves all of the wonders that he works with them, the loving touches, the healing, the—

Right. That. Hawke pushes herself up higher against the pillows to scan the floor of the room, and sure enough, there are the bodies. One wears a full-face helmet, and that helmet is crumpled and leaking blood. The other, the woman who tortured her, has her fatal wounds on full display. One of her arms has been torn clean off, and the other remains attached by only a thin strip of flesh and armor. Her eyes are shadowed over by her visor, but her mouth hangs open in a frozen expression of agony. She died screaming.

"Yes," Anders says, "they are dead." His voice is dark and exultant, an entirely different tone from the gentleness of a moment ago. "They will never harm anyone again. You were not the first, but you will be the last."

"You're perfect," Hawke tells him. She isn't usually a crier, but right now, she can feel her eyes stinging and has to force her words around the lump in her throat in order to get them out. "How did I get so damn lucky?"

Anders opens his mouth — probably to argue, because he's still somehow convinced that he's the one who doesn't deserve her — but is interrupted when Bruiser, jostled about by Hawke shifting beneath him, wriggles and whimpers and stretches himself awake. He barks happily at Hawke as he flings himself against her chest and licks her face.

Hawke takes advantage of the distraction to ask, "How many did you kill?"

It's Merrill who answers her. "Six!" she declares gleefully as she rubs the sleep from her eyes. "Two for me, two for Anders, one for Bruiser, and one for Sandal. Did you know about Sandal?"

"I don't think anyone knows about Sandal," Anders says wryly.

"So he's all right, then?" Hawke presses them. "Bodahn too?"

"Oh, yes, they're both perfectly fine, don't you fret. And good morning, lethallan! Sorry, I skipped that part at first. Oh! Right, and the water!"

Before Hawke can ask about that last non sequitur, Merrill is on her feet and practically bounding across the room to a tray left on the desk with a pitcher and a cup. She brings the tray back to the bed and fills the cup to the brim so that it splashes onto the sheets when Hawke takes it from her.

Hawke did not ask for any of this and silently doubts that she'll even be able to drink that much in one go. Only when the cold water hits her tongue, which is still dry and heavy from the thick cotton gag shoved in her mouth earlier, does she realize just how thirsty she is. She drains the cup so quickly that she ends up coughing, only to set it down on the tray and immediately refill it — exceedingly sloppily, because her dominant hand is still clinging to Anders, and Bruiser has her pinned at an awkward angle. Merrill reaches out to steady her, which if anything just leads to even more spilling than might otherwise have occurred, but Hawke appreciates the thought and also the gentle touch of her friend's hands.

By the time the pitcher is empty, Hawke feels as though her voice has been revived — which is good, because there's a lot to talk about. "How are we going to play this?" she asks Anders.

"Play?" Merrill says, her brow crinkling in confusion. "I don't think this is a game, lethallan."

"No," Anders agrees, "it isn't. Hawke, you don't have to—"

"Yes, I do," Hawke interrupts. "If nothing else, there's the bodies piled up in my house. I can't just leave them to rot, unfortunately." Unlike Fenris, she has to maintain a facade of respectability. "So, first of all, do we destroy them, or do we shove them in the knight-commander's face?"

"Well, let's see." Anders sighs and runs his free hand through his hair. "Why were they here? Do you know?"

"They wanted a Champion-abomination to teach Kirkwall a lesson about venerating mages. They didn't mention whose idea that was."

"I'm sorry," Anders blurts out. All pretense of holding himself together to discuss strategy dissolves in an instant. His hand tightens around hers, and she can feel him shudder with suppressed sobs.

"I'm the one who should be sorry. You _just_ finished putting me back together after the duel, and here I go getting myself torn apart again." It's a joke, sort of. Maybe. After thirty years on the face of this planet, Hawke still isn't entirely sure that she understands how jokes work.

"It isn't your fault." If anything, he sounds even more upset than before, so Hawke supposes she wasn't very funny. He pulls her hand back toward him and cradles it against his face, his cheek warm and rough with stubble. "I never wanted them to touch you," he murmurs into her wrist.

"Well, they didn't," she tells him, "so you don't have to worry. It's just cuts and bruises, same as the usual."

"That isn't what I meant!" Anders looks and sounds horrified, which is the opposite of the reaction Hawke was trying for. "Hawke... I would _never_..."

He stalls out on attempting to articulate what he would never, and Hawke gets tired of waiting. "Then I don't see what the issue is. This isn't the first time you've had to heal me after a Templar managed to get a blade in me."

"Um, excuse me," Merrill interjects. "It's just... It's different when it's fighting. I think. Because fights can hurt, but they're also terribly exciting. I helped clean you up, and this isn't the first time I've done that, either, but... I don't know. I'm sorry, you're already looking at me like I've said the wrong thing again."

"You haven't," Hawke reassures her. "That all makes sense enough. I'm just not sure how to respond." Hawke usually isn't one to dance around a subject, but until Merrill jumped into the conversation with her own typical style of gracelessness, she hadn't even realized that everything she'd just been saying was more bluster than bluntness.

A lengthy silence drags out between the three of them. Hawke can't tell whether it's awkward or just contemplative.

Anders is the one to break it. "It isn't defiance to pretend that it's nothing," he tells her. "That's what _they_ say it is."

"Fine. It wasn't nothing." Hawke squeezes her eyes shut and lets the stinging in them resolve into a few thin tears that pool in the hollows above her cheeks and fall no farther. Bruiser whimpers in sympathy and licks them away, and Hawke scratches his head gratefully as she meets Anders' gaze again. "That's why I don't want to be helpless right now," she finally admits.

"I'm not sure that we should be talking politics, then," Anders says with a weary, apologetic smile. Another sort of-maybe-joke that isn't funny. "If these were rogue Templars acting on their own initiative, then everything ends with their deaths. It won't stick to anyone higher up any more than Alrik's crimes did. If they were following orders..."

"Then they didn't do anything wrong," Hawke finishes for him.

"Not that we can prove, anyway. Maybe they came into your house to lawfully arrest you, and you resisted. No one who matters will say otherwise."

"Shove the bodies in the knight-commander's face, then," Hawke decides. "The least she can do is tell us which it is. If she wants to declare her intent to arrest me, I'm ready for her. If she doesn't, I'm going to make her squirm."

"I love you," Anders says abruptly. It almost always sounds abrupt when he says it. And desperate. And a little afraid.

"I love you too," Hawke assures him. "We aren't in the Circle. Sure, Templars came into my room and dragged me out of my bed in the middle of the night, but they died for it. It cost them everything, and I'm still here, and I'm going to be just fine. Now they're the ones without recourse." The bravado in her voice is already starting to feel natural again. Deciding that now is the time for boldness, she charges on: "And you'll notice that their decision to target me had nothing to do with you, and their attempt to use me against you failed spectacularly, and you calmed down all on your own after killing them and went right to work healing me. So whatever it is that's kept you stalling on moving in with me, maybe it's time to get over that. Because I know it can't possibly be taking you _this_ long to get your woefully few possessions ready for the transfer."

Anders grins at that, true and bright. "I can't wait to hear you unleash that sort of airtight argument on Meredith Stannard."

"So you are moving in, then," Hawke presses on ruthlessly.

"Yes, love."

"By the end of this week, at the latest."

" _Yes_ , love." And then he actually laughs, and he kisses her hand, and Hawke realizes that they haven't let go of each other for a moment since she woke up. Bruiser barks jealously when she dares to stop petting him long enough to reach out and drag Anders in for an awkwardly angled kiss, and Merrill scratches his chin in condolence while cheerfully expounding on how cute the two of them are when they're happy before noticing that they're a bit too preoccupied to respond to her and excusing herself to go scrounge up breakfast.


End file.
